Best programming and hacker quotes. Ever.
Curated by fellow hackers Jarmo Pertman & Andri Möll
Interfaces keep things tidy, but don't accelerate growth: Functions do.
Alan J. Perlis
Beware of the Turing tar-pit in which everything is possible but nothing of interest is easy.
Alan J. Perlis
Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
Alan J. Perlis
If our customers wanted a product that worked that way, tell them to purchase a product that works that way.
Anonymous
Fight code entropy.
John Carmack
The time machine's software will have a recursive main method.
Anonymous
Processes and methodologies can make good servants but are poor masters.
Mark Dowd, John McDonald & Justin Schuh
... what society overwhelmingly asks for is snake oil. Of course, the snake oil has the most impressive names — otherwise you would be selling nothing — like "Structured Analysis and Design", "Software Engineering", "Maturity Models", "Management Information Systems", "Integrated Project Support Environments" "Object Orientation" and "Business Process Re-engineering" (the latter three being known as IPSE, OO and BPR, respectively).
Edsger W. Dijkstra
Programming languages are like girlfriends: The new one is better because you are better.
Anonymous
As a rule, software systems do not work well until they have been used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications.
Dave Parnas